Contact: Cary Perket / 619-297- 0321
or Karl Joyce / 952-831-2473

For Immediate Release - April, 2005

Minneapolis , Minnesota – Environmental Information Limited announced today that it has released a new EI Digest market report examining the commercial hazardous waste market. The report is an interim summary of findings from the first year of a two-year effort to examine the demand for commercial hazardous waste services in all fifty states. The states covered in the effort to-date include Alaska through Missouri .

As a general observation, researchers found that the overall amount of hazardous waste reported as being managed by generators in a state was not a reliable indicator of the business opportunities for hazardous waste services. In many cases, overall state volumes were high due to the inclusion of high volume aqueous wastes in the overall state volumes.  For example, Florida had the sixth highest volume of hazardous waste among the twenty-five states, but ranked sixteenth as a commercial business opportunity. Typically, these high volume aqueous streams were from a very small number of manufacturing locations.

Comparison of Rank in Overall Waste Management by Large Quantity Generators
to State’s Rank in Commercial Opportunity

The corollary to this finding is that, in reality, only a small number of hazardous waste generators have the capabilities of disposing, treating and/or disposing of their own hazardous wastes. The companies that manage their own waste by on-site disposal, recycling and/or treatment tend to be those that have “economies of scale” because they have large volumes to justify the cost of building their own facilities. The vast majority of the 20,000 “large quantity” RCRA generators rely almost exclusively on commercial hazardous waste management services.

Another corollary of this finding is that overall state trends in hazardous waste management are frequently not representative of changes in demand for commercial hazardous waste services. In the most extreme example, overall waste management amounts in Arkansas decreased by 10% from 1997 to 2001, but upon examination one finds that the decrease is almost entirely due to a reduction in deep well injection of aqueous waste by a single company.

In many business markets, 80% of the commercial opportunity is from 20% of the potential customer base.  Research to-date suggests that 80% of a state’s commercial hazardous waste management opportunity is typically from less than 20% of the state’s large quantity hazardous waste generators. Research also suggests that 80% of the commercial opportunity for specific types of disposal, recycling and/or treatment lies with far less than 20% of the state’s large quantity hazardous waste generators.

The full report is available to EI Digest customers on Envirobiz.com. The EI Digest is jointly produced by Environmental Information Limited ( Minneapolis , Minnesota ) and The Envirobiz Group, Inc ( San Diego ). For further information about EI Digest reports, please contact Environmental Information Limited (952-831-2473).